Exile
by mosylu
Summary: After Zoom is gone, Team Flash is split between worlds and the breaches sealed. But how did it happen? Written before the finale.
1. Homesick

(A/N): Written before the finale. Just another way I thought (hoped) the season might end. Featuring E2 Barry and Iris

* * *

"Honey, all I'm saying is that it may be time to look for a place of our own."

Barry furrowed his brow at her over his sunglasses. He'd adapted to the Atlantis island style unexpectedly quickly, although true to his clotheshorse ways, his brightly patterned shirts were perfectly matched with his beach shorts and those were coordinated beautifully with his flip-flops. "My parents are happy to have us for as long as we like, you know."

"Of course they are, but their house here isn't the biggest, and it's just getting kind of cramped. And while we're on the subject, I think we should find jobs. What about applying to the Atlantis PD?"

He looked away.

"You don't think we should," she said.

He lifted one shoulder and let it fall.

"Bare - "

"I know," he said. "I know you're used to a lot more activity than this. I know helping my folks out around the house - " He hoisted the plastic grocery sack in his hand, the reason for their current expedition. "- isn't quite enough to occupy you. I know you're used to waking up every day with a purpose, because so am I. But an apartment? Jobs? It's like saying we'll never go back."

Now she looked away.

"You do want to go back," he said softly. "Don't you? I mean - if you didn't, I would understand. But _I_ want to. It's home."

Going back to Central City? To the place where her father had been murdered by metas? She'd recoiled from the thought when they first got here, sunk too deep in sudden grief and the shock of giving everything up to hide out from Zoom.

But it had been two months, and deep inside, she yearned for Central City, like yearning for sunlight or water. The shape of the buildings against the sky, the smell of the river (okay, most of the river; the stank down by the warehouse district could curl your eyebrows), the food trucks that were only barely regulated by the Health Department so every rushed street lunch was an adventure.

Her job; their house. The _sssshhhhhew_ of the monorail overhead. Their favorite park where she ran on Saturday mornings and he read on the grass, yelling encouragement every time she puffed by, cursing the physical fitness requirements. The coffee shop where she'd worked before entering the police academy. The ringing of the phones in the precinct, the endless piles of paperwork, the cluttered, sunlit warmth of Barry's lab when she went up there to drop a file and snatch a kiss.

"I do want to go back," she admitted, and his shoulders relaxed. "It's home. It always will be. But right now, baby, it's got Zoom, and I'm keeping you as far away from that maniac as I possibly can."

Against all reason, his face lit. "But I was going to tell you about that!" He pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I've kept in touch - just, low-key -" he assured her, "- very down-low - with a couple of the guys. And they say Zoom hasn't been seen in nearly a week and a half."

She swallowed her hope. "He can run at the speed of sound. I think he can keep people from seeing him."

"Right, but also, meta activity has dropped off sharply. Almost to zero." He beamed at her.

She shook her head. "Maybe they're gearing up for something big."

"Or maybe _he_ did something, like he said he would."

Barry didn't have to define the pronoun. _He_ was only ever one person, between them.

She took his phone, read the email, then handed it back. "I don't know," she said. "I just - I don't know."

"Look, when we get back to my parents' house, we'll check the internet. The newspapers. If they back this up - "

"It still feels too risky. No, let's take tomorrow and just have a look around, see what rents on a one-bedroom are like - "

"Honey, everything's a risk."

"No," she said sharply. "We came here because he'll be after you, and I can't lose you. Not you."

His face went soft. His hand closed around hers, then brought it to his lips.

"You're all I've got," she whispered.

"I know," he breathed out.

She sniffed hard and cleared her throat. "If," she said. "If we get confirmation that he's dead and gone to hell where he belongs, yeah, I'll be the first one packing. But until then - Barry, we may be in exile, but I refuse to accept being in limbo, too."

He nodded slowly. "Okay," he said. "Maybe it is time for us to get our own place."

She smiled at him, feeling her lips tremble. Maybe not jobs at the PD, she thought, now that there was hope Zoom might be gone. Maybe retail. Something they could leave easily. She could still make a mean cup of coffee. Always work for a barista, and now she'd be able to handle the late-night assholes.

They continued walking, quietly debating the amenities they could and couldn't live without. When they tuned up the front walk, Iris did her usual quick scan of the front of the house and froze.

"Who's that?" Barry said.

The slender, dark-haired white woman sitting on the front steps rose to her feet. She looked tired - exhausted. Also strangely familiar. Something about her build and the shape of her face, maybe. Nothing Iris could point to.

But it was a familiarity that made her hackles rise, made her slide her hand to where her gun should be. Barry, who knew that motion, stepped back, leaving her space to fight if she needed it.

"Iris?" the woman said. "Barry?"

"I think you have the wrong people," Iris said firmly.

The woman met her eyes. "No, I don't."

Iris flexed her hands and shifted her stance. The woman registered it - of course she did; Iris wasn't taking any pains to be subtle - but didn't move into a responsive stance. She just stood there and said, "My name is Caitlin Snow. I'm from another Earth."

Behind her, Barry twitched. She put her hand back to catch his, squeezing - _I know - yes -_ and let go.

"You're a friend of Cisco's," she said. "I remember him saying your name." For some reason, the context was a little fuzzy. Well, that whole day after her father's death was a little fuzzy. But she remembered the warmth and the affection in the younger man's voice when he'd said it. "Are they here?" she asked. "Cisco and - and other Barry?"

"No," Caitlin Snow said, the single word like a boulder thudding to the ground.

"What about Zoom?" Barry blurted, stepping up next to her. "They were the ones who told us to go."

"Zoom is dead."

Iris went still. "How do you know?"

Caitlin's eyes suddenly glowed blue. "Because I killed him."

Suddenly Iris remembered the context of the name Caitlin Snow.

"Killer Frost," she snarled, pushing Barry behind her again, looking around for a weapon. How? Had she somehow mastered stealth? Was she here to take revenge, or start taking over Zoom's operations or -

The blue melted back into brown. "Not exactly," Caitlin said. "Your Killer Frost is dead. Zoom killed her. I'm - " She looked at her hands. "I'm still coming into my powers. But Zoom is dead, I promise you."

"Anybody can say that," Iris told her. "Anybody could say anything."

Caitlin pulled a phone from her pocket and held it out. The design was strange - other-Earth style, Iris guessed. It had no reception, of course.

What it did have was a picture on the screen. Zoom, splayed out on a concrete floor, with a sizeable and very sharp icicle thrust through his chest.

Iris grabbed it and studied it closely, while Barry said, _"You took a picture?"_ His voice squeaked with astonished horror.

"It's not like I've been sitting around staring at it for the past week," Caitlin snapped. "But the Iris I know always double-checks her sources."

"Smart woman," Iris said.

"Naturally," Barry said.

She gave him a quick smile and then went back to the picture. Zoom, this was actually Zoom. And from the looks of it, actually dead.

His mask was off, revealing a handsome man in his late thirties. Blond hair, blank, staring blue eyes. Water and blood puddled under the body, soaking into the concrete.

"His name was Hunter Zolomon. I'm told he's somewhat famous here, under that name."

Iris looked up. "Shoulda known," she said. "Nobody's that completely batshit without leaving a trail. Where is this?"

"The Saint Perez Mental Asylum. It's where - "

"- he was committed," Iris finished. "Yeah, I know it. It's been condemned ever since the explosion. You left him there to rot?"

"He didn't deserve any better," Caitlin said coldly.

Iris had to agree.

She handed the phone back, glancing at Barry. He nodded and pulled his own phone out, firing off a quick text to someone in Central City who could check the asylum for a body.

Caitlin watched the interchange, completely unsurprised.

"Well, thanks," Iris said. "You came all this way to tell us we were safe, I appreciate that. Now you can go home with a clear conscience."

"Actually, I can't," Caitlin said.

Barry looked up from his phone. "What happened?"

"The breaches. They're closed."

A wave of relief hit Iris. They were safe again. No monsters from other dimensions could spill through and wreak havoc. Just the homegrown ones, and those, they were getting a handle on. Especially if Snow's story checked out.

Barry, of course, caught the other implication. "You're stranded here," he said.

She nodded.

He stepped around Iris and reached out as if to put a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't!" Iris and Caitlin both said it at the same time, a sharp snarl of sound. Caitlin actually jumped back.

Barry stared at her, wide-eyed.

"I told you I was still coming into my powers," Caitlin said. "Sometimes I - I touch things and they freeze over. Sometimes things are just fine. I don't know. I don't dare touch anybody that I don't intend to hurt. So - please. Don't."

He dropped his hand. "I wish we could help get you back home," he said. "But Harrison Wells has been missing all this time, and he's the only one I can think of who might know what to do."

"He's back on my Earth. On the other side of the breaches. No, it's - " She shook her head. "It's actually better this way."

Iris found herself asking, "Don't you want to go home?"

Caitlin gave her a quick glance, and Iris saw an echo of her own homesickness in the depths of her eyes - but this was homesickness for a world that was further out of reach than Iris's Central City was, even here in Atlantis.

Then she looked away. "I have a lot of atonement ahead of me."

"Atonement?"

As if she hadn't heard Barry, Caitlin continued, more briskly, "Even with Zoom dead, you have a serious metahuman problem in your Central City. I believe I can help."

Iris stood watching her, wary. Killer Frost had been a stone crazy bitch and Iris wouldn't have trusted her as far as she could throw her. But then, Reverb had been a narcissistic little shit, nothing like the sweet, open-hearted Cisco Ramon that she'd met. And even the Barry Allen from the other Earth hadn't quite been her Barry.

She looked at him, her own Barry, soft-hearted but not soft-headed. He quirked his brows at her over his glasses, his silent, _Well?_ Which meant he'd taken Caitlin Snow's measure and thought Iris should at least hear her out.

She pulled her keys out of her pocket. "Why don't you come inside, Ms. Snow."


	2. Thirty-Two Degrees

The hospital smelled like hospitals always smelled - institutional, sort of bleachy - and sounded like they sounded - phones ringing, voices murmuring, machines beeping in the distance.

Barry sat with his head in one hand. The other hand was clamped tight around Iris's. He felt like her touch was the only thing that tethered him to earth. Without it, he might just float away and dissolve. Not the tearing pain of the speed force ripping him to shreds, but the dreamy nothingness of a body that simply didn't want to be here anymore. Didn't want to be anywhere.

Zoom was dead, he kept telling himself. Zoom was dead, and that was good. That was about the only good thing to come out of this day.

He looked up to check the doors that led from the waiting room to the ICU.

Cisco was beyond those doors.

And Caitlin was …

He shut his eyes and told himself not to think about Caitlin anymore. Not ever again.

She wasn't Caitlin anymore, anyway. She couldn't possibly be.

 _But Zoom was dead._

He looked around. Dante and Mrs. Ramon were huddled together, Dante's arm looped around his mother's hunched shoulders. She had her head bowed over the rosary knotted through her fingers, her mouth moving as her eyes stared blankly at the linoleum.

He wondered if she knew all the things her overlooked second son had done for Central City, for the world, for all the worlds.

For a split second, he was back there in the insane asylum on Earth-2, weaving his way around over a hundred breaches that had spontaneously opened up when Cisco had cut Zoom off from the Speed Force. They'd been like ragged curtains in the air, swirling and fluttering with glimpses of his own world at every step.

The battle raged around him and he had his hands full trying not to trip in between worlds as he dodged and punched Zoom's metahumans, battling to find his friends, battling to find Zoom.

He'd found Cisco on the floor, and Caitlin hunched over him, hands pressed flat against his chest. "Caitlin!" he cried.

She'd looked up with glowing blue eyes, and he had to swallow a scream. Then he'd noticed the blue tinge to Cisco's lips, and the stillness of his chest, and everything he ever knew about one of his best friends shattered around him.

He shoved her - he wasn't proud of that, even now. She'd gone flying, landing a foot away. She'd sprawled there, watching coldly as he hunched over Cisco, pressing his fingers to his friend's cold skin, searching frantically for a heartbeat that wasn't there.

"What did you do?" he screamed at her. _"What did you do?"_

She opened her mouth, and then he remembered the defibrillator in his suit, and slapped his hands onto Cisco's ( _cold, cold, cold_ ) chest. Lightning crackled and Cisco's body spasmed for a split second. Barry checked again and found the heartbeat, slow, almost syrupy, but there. He let out a gasp of relief.

She reached out, mist spilling off her hand, and Barry slapped it away. "Stay away," he snarled through his teeth. "You stay away."

He hauled Cisco into his arms - he flopped like a rag doll - and looked around for the nearest breach. Once he burst into his own world, he reached the nearest hospital in less than a minute. "Hypothermia," he'd gasped as nurses jumped up in shock. "H-his heart stopped - it's back now but - but he's so c-cold - "

"All right, we've got him, okay - _damn_ , he's cold, somebody get a core temp right now - how long was his heart stopped?"

"I don't know," Barry had said. "I'm sorry. His name is Cisco Ramon, his emergency contacts are in his phone. I'm sorry. I have to go." He'd bolted out of the hospital, back toward the the breaches, the battle -

Where he'd found Zoom with an icicle through his chest, and the metahuman army fleeing, and Caitlin gone.

He'd stared down the blank-eyed shell of his enemy, trying to make sense of it.

Why would Killer Frost kill Zoom? For revenge? To take his position as the head of the metahuman army?

Why would Caitlin become Killer Frost in the first place?

But he'd seen her, hunched like a feeding scavenger over Cisco's body. _Cisco_ of all people. She wasn't Caitlin. Maybe it was the darkness, maybe it was being with Zoom all that time, maybe she'd just never been the person he thought she was, but -

"Flash!" Wally had yelled. "Flash, the breaches!"

They were closing around them, healing up. Only his speed propelled him through the very last one as it shrank into nothingness.

Back on their earth, they'd taken stock. Everyone was here. Everyone except Cisco and Caitlin. A babble of panic rose, a quest for one last breach that maybe wasn't gone yet -

"Leave her there," Barry said in a hard voice.

"What? Why?"

He'd told them.

Now they sat in the waiting room, waiting to find out if they'd lost another friend today.

The doors thumped slightly as someone came through. Barry jolted upright.

"Cisco Ramon?" the doctor called out in a slightly accented voice.

They all leapt to their feet and crowded around the plump, greying South Asian woman. If she was startled to see such a melange, she didn't show it. "I'm Dr. Melissa Megwhar and I'm treating Cisco," she said. "His heart is beating normally again."

Gasps of relief, a whispered "Gracias a Dios" from Mrs. Ramon.

"Can we see him?" Dante asked.

"I'm afraid not. He's still unconscious and we're still working on him intensively."

Joe stirred. "But you said - "

"I said his heart was beating, and so it is. The real worry with cardiac arrest is the possibility of neurological aftereffects. That's what we're trying to ward off."

"You mean brain damage," Barry said numbly. What would that be like? Would he even be Cisco anymore?

"Yes. A brain that goes without fresh oxygen for more than three to five minutes will almost certainly suffer cellular death. Any possibility that any of you know how long his heart was stopped?"

"No," Barry said hollowly. "The Flash didn't know."

Her eyes rested on him, as if they saw more than he was strictly comfortable with. Iris put her arm around his waist.

"Well," Dr. Megwhar said. "There's bruising and a slightly cracked rib, indicative of chest compressions performed, and a mild burn on his clothing that looks like it came from an electrical shock similar to a defibrillator. So the Flash certainly knew what he was doing. But honestly, the most promising thing is the hypothermia."

Barry's head shot up. "The cold _stopped_ his heart."

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. "I can assure you it did not, Mr - ?"

"Allen," he said. "Barry Allen. I'm one of - I'm his best friend. What do you mean it didn't stop his heart? What did?"

"We'll have to do more research to determine how and why a healthy young man suffered apparently spontaneous cardiac arrest, but the hypothermia was a very mild case. His core temperature was thirty-two point five degrees - "

"That's freezing!" Barry burst out. "That's _frozen_!"

"Celsius," she said through her teeth, clearly fed up with men interrupting her who knew nothing about medicine. "Or about ninety degrees Fahrenheit."

Joe, who'd had first aid, said, "That's not so bad, really."

"No, it's not. Hypothermia doesn't even begin to affect the heart until the core temperature drops to twenty-eight, and cardiac activity wouldn't stop entirely unless it fell all the way to twenty." She shot Barry a look. "Eighty-two and about seventy, in Fahrenheit."

Under his arm, Iris twitched. "Barry," she whispered.

 _No,_ he told himself. All this meant was he'd stopped her in time.

"Okay," Joe said. "But what do you mean, it's promising? Far as I can tell, it just means you need to warm him up."

But she shook her head. "Oh, we won't warm him up for at several hours at least. Brain damage occurs in these cases because the brain is demanding huge amounts of oxygen that the body simply can't provide without a strongly beating heart to push the blood through the veins. Not to mention some other chemical reactions within the body as a result of the cardiac arrest itself."

This was the way Caitlin would have explained it, Barry thought, and had to clamp his teeth together.

"Hypothermia puts the brakes on the metabolism and acts to reduce these demands, slowing the rate of damage. Therapeutic hypothermia is precisely what EMTs would have administered if they'd found your friend instead of the Flash. And they would have lowered his temperature to about that point, as well. He was really very lucky it happened like that."

Barry's ears rang. He shut his eyes, picturing the scene again. Caitlin's arms braced on Cisco's chest - he'd interpreted it as Killer Frost drawing all his heat out of him, but -

CPR. He hadn't done any chest compressions. It must have been her.

And the mild - _mild!_ \- hypothermia, when Earth-2's Killer Frost had frozen a man solid in under ten seconds.

Mrs. Ramon said, "Does this mean he's going to be okay?"

She hesitated. "Therapeutic hypothermia isn't a magic bullet. It will slow damage, but it won't completely prevent it. But the human brain is a marvelously plastic organ, more so than we used to think." She spread her hands. "We'll just have to wait and see."

"How long until he wakes up?"

"Hard to say, this early, and with this little information. It could be hours - it could be days - it could be weeks."

 _It could be never_ hung in the air, unsaid.

"Thank you, Doctor," Dante said, holding out his hand.

She shook it, then Cisco's mom's hand, Joe's and even Iris's. She told them that if he didn't wake up within an hour or so, they would be better off going home and waiting for the hospital to call. Barry jolted to attention and said, "Thank you," through numb lips. She nodded at all of them and turned to go back to Cisco's bedside.

Dante and Mrs. Ramon immediately pulled out their phones and started making calls in a mixture of Spanish and English. She was crying, her mascara running, and his voice trembled as he talked to whatever relative he'd reached.

The Star Labs team pulled away to a corner, giving both groups a little privacy.

"Barry!" Iris hissed, clutching his hands.

"I know," he said. "Oh, God. I made such a terrible mistake."

Joe put his hand on the back of Barry's neck. "Hey. You didn't know. It was a rough scene, you miss details - "

"But Caitlin. Why in any multiverse would Caitlin hurt Cisco? Why would she betray us like that?" Barry pressed his fingers into his eyes, feeling tears burn under his fingertips. "Why would I even think that?"

"Can we open a breach?" Iris said. "Go get her? Bring her home?"

"Maybe. We've done it mechanically a couple of times. But Cisco's the only one who's ever managed a breach that went where we wanted it and when we wanted it, without a side effect of total chaos." And Cisco might never wake up. Or he might wake up and not be Cisco anymore.

Iris seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "Brain damage," she said quietly. "What if brain damage affects his powers?"

"Okay," Joe said firmly. "Okay, you two. I know you're thinking of worst-case scenarios right now, but it's early days yet. They're gonna work on him. We'll wait and see. If we have to, we'll call on your pal Ollie, borrow some of that clout and that fortune, bring in specialists." He pulled out his phone. "I gotta make some calls. You guys should think about going home - "

"No," they both said at once.

He eyed them, then nodded and stepped away.

Barry stood for a moment holding Iris. He wished Cisco was awake, and fine, not just for Cisco's sake, but also so there might be some possibility that Barry could send a message across universes -

 _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

FINIS


End file.
